Digital Content

In courtrooms across the US, judges hear from lawyers, prosecutors, plaintiffs, law enforcement officers, witnesses and others, all with the mission to resolve criminal and civil disputes fairly and transparently. Most observers agree, however, that the volume and complexity of cases before the courts in recent years have slowed the proverbial wheels of justice to a crawl. Then suddenly, the courts came to grips with the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and scrambled to defer in-person hearings. Many feared cases might grind to a standstill. Instead, something remarkable happened.

For the second time this month, Congress has sent legislation to President Joe Biden that’s designed to keep better track of cybercrime data. The House on March 29 cleared a bill that would direct the Justice Department to collect and measure cybercrime statistics in several ways, such as a mandate for the Bureau of Justice Statistics and US Census Bureau to include questions about cybercrime on the National Crime Victimization Survey, which tallies crimes committed against people 12 and older.

Federal Communications Commissioner Brendan Carr called publicly for the Federal Trade Commission to open an investigation into the nonprofit Crisis Text Line (CTL) over the suicide hotline’s former data-sharing practices with for-profit spinoff Loris.ai.

Global standards ensure that things like smartphones and laptops — and even the internet itself — work across borders. "Standard bodies are essential to ensure interoperability which is critical to achieving 'economies of scale' and technology reach the masses," wireless consultant Chetan Sharma told Axios.  "Geopolitical tensions have a real prospect of splintering the Internet and the wireless industry and the emergence of completely decoupled supply chains and ecosystems around the world," Sharma said.

As Russia makes preparations to possibly disconnect from the global internet in a bid to control the narrative around the invasion of Ukraine, Lantern is rushing to lay the final pieces of an unbreakable network that the Kremlin won’t be able to take down. The company has seen staggering growth inside Russia in the last four weeks for its app that allows users to bypass restrictions the Kremlin has put in place on platforms like Facebook, Twitter

The United States and the European Commission have committed to a new Trans-Atlantic Data Privacy Framework, which will foster trans-Atlantic data flows and address the concerns raised by the Court of Justice of the European Union when it struck down in 2020 the Commission’s adequacy decision underlying the EU-US Privacy Shield framework. By ensuring a durable and reliable legal basis for data flows, the new framework will underpin an inclusive and competitive digital economy and lay the foundation for further economic cooperation. Through the framework, the US makes commitments to:

President Biden's Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson hinted she may be open to a more expansive reading of antitrust laws during her confirmation hearing in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee on March 23.

Meta —the parent company for Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp — could drag hundreds of competitors into its legal battle, aiming to slow the Federal Trade Commission's prosecution and "bury" its lawyers in paperwork.

As the Kremlin moves to block or throttle more foreign websites and Russian citizens rush to deploy workarounds such as virtual private networks, concern is growing that Moscow plans to recreate Beijing’s tough restrictions — known collectively as the “Great Firewall” — that shield Chinese citizens from much of the broader internet. But Russia likely possesses neither the infrastructure nor the technical capabilities to mirror China’s relative success in walling off its citizens from the web.